The Critical Skill

Affinity.. In this essay I use it to describe an attraction between two things. Think of it as a sort of magnetic attraction that binds two things together until they are separated enough to make the attraction dissipate.

Consider the grooves in a vinyl record. The record needle can travel anywhere on the surface of the record but it doesn't because it is “locked in”. It is compelled to follow the groove because it is the path of least resistance.

How about a cross country skier? They can ski anywhere they want, but they tend to stay in the prepared tracks. It is easier to stay in the tracks than to venture outside of them. They have an affinity for those tracks.

Ever look at a window during a rain storm? Those individual droplets hang there, held together by surface tension, as they move downward on the window a bit at a time. Then they combine with another drop and fall faster and eventually they find the track left by a previous droplet and they tend to follow that path in it's zigzag course downward. Reduced friction makes it easier for them to do so. They have an affinity for that track.

Another example might be that of a classical electron. It has places where it “likes” to be: valence levels. It doesn't choose to have random levels of energy, rather particular ones for which it has an “affinity”. Actually the term affinity is used very often when discussing chemical reactions at the atomic level.

Finally, imagine two strong magnets placed a couple feet apart. And imagine you are waving around a screw driver, and when it comes close to one of the magnets it snaps into contact. And it remains there until you exert enough force to pry it away. And after you pry it away, and wave it around again, it may come close enough to become attached to the other magnet, and then it gets stuck there. It “wants” to remain there. It hasn't lost it's affinity for the first magnet, it's just that it is currently in the grasp of the new magnet, and there it will remain until disturbed by a sufficient force, or until the attraction energy dissipates for some reason.

We each have a varying level of consciousness (LOC) which describes our awareness level at any point in time. During normal waking life experience, this LOC is attached to, (is driven/fed by) data from our senses: “sense data”. i.e. sight, sound, feeling, taste and smell. This sense data is the “magnet” to which our consciousness is attracted. We have an affinity for our sense data. Once the two are “connected” they are hard to separate. They stick together until a force is applied or until the attractive energy goes away.

When you close your eyes to go to sleep, the primary “energizing force” driving the attraction to the senses (vision) disappears. With eyes closed, all you can “see” is blackness. Initially blackness is not just the lack of eyesight: it IS what your eye is seeing: that is, blackness. The eye is communicating to your brain that what is sees is “the color” black. You are still actively seeing at this point. You are still connected to the sense of sight: for a while. And over time, especially if the other senses are not very strong, the attraction drops to the point where awareness is free to wonder, to drift aimlessly.

What happens then usually starts with subtle visual sensations that are not driven by your eyes. It usually starts with subtle shifting swirling monochromatic clouds. This period, called hypnogogia, continues as shapes take more form and eventually take on color, and eventually a whole new non-physical world takes form: a dream. In this dream-space, all the senses are represented to us (sometimes some are more realistic than others) but are not driven by the sense organs of the physical body, but are created but some other mechanism.

I am theorizing that these black swirls in a field of black are actually the combination of TWO visual streams. Think of it as similar to a photographic double exposure. The first is the black that you are seeing with your eyes, and the other, the swirling, is the initial sensation of the sight-like vision which is created by something else. Whatever it is that creates it, it is the same mechanism that creates a visual scene in a dream.

Note- In another paper I describe how even our real life experience is created by this non-physical means. How there actually IS NO physical aspect to anything. How there is no real world at all in the objective sense that most people believe. But I'll leave that aside for now and stick to the subject of: our affinity to connect to either the world of the senses OR the world of dream.

So when we are fully asleep, we are connected to the non-physical (dream) world. One formulated using simulated sense data. Our awareness has moved from being attached to one magnet (our real world sense data), and then it spent some time drifting (unconnected), and now has attached to the other “magnet” of our simulated dream-based sense data.

This new magnet seems less powerful than the real life one, as we seem to be able to wake up and disconnect from it much more easily than when we go to sleep. Also the dream world itself is much more malleable than our real world. Note-This fact is discussed in my other paper on the topic.

Also as evidence of a weaker attraction we see that if a loud noise or other pronounced physical sense is encountered, it will usually break (or perhaps actually overwhelm) the affinity for dreaming, at which point we will reconnect to our physical senses: we will wake up.

Alternatively, when we have had sufficient sleep, we find that the force energizing the “magnet” of our dream vision seems to decrease to the point that once again, our consciousness drifts again, back to the (now) more powerful attraction to real world sense data. This alternating affinity of our consciousness to sleep vs waking “sense” data is the daily cycle of sleep and wake that we all experience.

Think of how we look at the stars at night. How beautiful and magnificent they are. We can't do this during the day, not because they are not still there and shining, but because the light from those stars are overwhelmed by the light of the Sun. In the same way, our dream aspect may always be there, but the glare of our physical sense data may simply overwhelm the the more subtle and perhaps weaker power of the non-physical “magnet”.

There is another aspect to our daily sleep cycle which I think encapsulates “the critical skill”. This is regarding the fact that our actual LOC in wake vs sleep is quite different. We have all found that when we dream, our mental acuity is decreased. Our level of discernment is also much less.

For example: where we might accept a talking dog or even our unaided ability to fly while dreaming, we would immediately reject this in our waking state. (This is not that case if we are lucid dreaming, but hold that thought for a minute.)

So what's the big deal? What could we do if we suddenly found ourselves in a dream, while retaining our waking lucidity? I have written a blog describing a lucid dream where I discovered that some aspect of me was creating the world, at the same time as the conscious and alert aspect of me stood and watched in amazement.

But further, what I am really getting to is the fact that in many spritual practices, we have been told that there is not only a whole aspect of non-physical reality waiting to be explored, but that there are entities in this non-physical world which are there and available to offer guidance and information to us, if we were only able to ask, and pay attention to, and remember the responses. That's a pretty “big deal” I would say.

Many say that we, while dreaming, have these interactions with non-physical entities all the time, but we don't remember most of them. You might say that this is all hogwash and that there are no individuated conscious entities other than in physical reality, but I choose to listen to the mounds of data substantiating this fact, and to try and experience this myself so I can draw my own conclusions.

Unfortunately for me, lucid dreams are few and far between. Perhaps I have one every two weeks at this point. Also the way I have experienced lucid dreams is via a spontaneous awakening inside the dream. The good news is that I have evidence that the dream world is quite realistic and detailed and in-fact is indistinguishable from real life. The bad news is, I never seem to have a prepared game plan for exploring, since I awoke in the middle of dream with no warning and no prepared game-plan to execute.

What would be a better situation is if I could prepare a plan (an intention) and travel into a dream-like state while maintaining full lucidity and while holding this intention. In this case I could proceed with a plan, get the information I desired, and return with that information. Also, if it is true that “helpers” of some sort are available, I could solicit help from the appropriate resource, rather than fumble around randomly in this other world.

This brings us to the “critical skill”. How can one move to a dream-like state (a place where the non-physical reality provides the sense data to formulate the experience) while maintaining full lucid awareness? There are lucid dream techniques to do this but:

a- I have been unable to make it work, and

b- lucid dreaming doesn't provide for the type of coaching and assistance that could prove to be invaluable to a searcher. However, shamanic journeying does.

I plan to use shamanic journeying to accomplish this. And although I have been unsuccessful so far, I plan to continue to work on this skill.

In addition, I think an awareness of the “transitional affinity” aspect of consciousness and sense data vs simulation data, can provide a road-map to help understand the nuances of what is taking place, and can perhaps provide the framework for devising a more repeatable and perhaps easier to learn transition methodology.

That's the “critical skill” and one of the things I'm up to at this time..